Yesterday I sent one of my new SF stories to a small internet magazine. Within 8 hours it had been rejected with a nice form letter which stated that somewhere there was a stupid magazine that would run my story, but not here, buddy.
Reader(s) of this blog know that I am no stranger to rejection. Most writers know the sting of that polite little letter stating thanks but no thanks. When I get one of them I usually shrug and decide where else to send the piece. It is not uncommon for one of my stories to be rejected by three magazines then find its home in a nice little anthology somewhere.
But…well, for some reason this lightning fast rejection put me on my ass. Am I so horrible a writer that my stuff isn’t even worth a day’s contemplation?
(Truth? No. This particular magazine is rather new and didn’t have 1000 stories waiting to be read. They know what they want. And they don’t want me. No hard feelings, guys.)
So I asked myself the age-old question all scribblers come down to: Why do I write?
There are glib answers. I write because I want to be rich and famous. That’s hilarious–as if a writer becomes rich and famous without being named J.K. Rowling.
I write, another glib answer goes, because there are people in my head that are talking and doing things and they won’t let me alone unless I write down what’s going on with them. This is partially true. The rejected short story was something that came to me while I drifted to sleep one night. I jumped out of bed and wrote down what I could because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all.
However, this answer speaks more to my need for a good therapist.
Do I write because it gives my life purpose? Hell, volunteering for the Red Cross would give my life purpose and be useful to the world. My writing? Not so much.
I stared at the walls in my little duplex in the desert. I wanted a true answer, something that wasn’t glib or cliché. Something I could feel to the core of my soul.
And the answer?
Dear reader, I don’t have the answer. I really don’t know what compels me to write, has compelled me to write stories and poems and essays and my three pages journal daily for the last 40 years. I don’t know. I can’t tell you.
Which frightens me. I should have a ready answer to this age-old question. I should know why I spend so much time at the keyboard creating characters and so much time scribbling in my notebook composing useless poetry. I should know. But I don’t.
Hear that sound? That’s the universe laughing at me.
Mark Bruce, Writer 